NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan, Part 1: Titan For Gaming, Titan For Compute
by Ryan Smith on February 19, 2013 9:01 AM ESTOrigin’s Genesis: Titan on Water & More to Come
Wrapping up part 1 of our look at NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX Titan, we wanted to take a quick look at the tri-SLI system NVIDIA sampled to us for this article: Origin’s Genesis. Without the ability to publish performance data we can’t go into any detail and otherwise fully evaluate it, but what we can do is give you a sneak peek at what’s among the most unusual, and likely most powerful Titan systems on the market.
But first, as a bit of a preface, as we mentioned earlier in our article NVIDIA has been sampling reviewers with various SFF and tri-SLI systems to showcase their two boutique computer concepts. With the tri-SLI system it was not only intended to show off raw performance, but also to serve as a showcase of Titan’s build quality. You see, NVIDIA had told us that the acoustics on Titan were so good that a tri-SLI system could not only be a reasonable choice from a background noise perspective, but that it would be notably quieter than even a GTX 680 tri-SLI system, the latter being particularly hard to believe given GTX 680’s impressive acoustics and low power consumption.
Of course, things didn’t exactly go according to plan, and in a happy accident Origin went above and beyond NVIDIA’s original request. As the Genesis’ marquee feature is water-cooling, Origin went all-out in setting up our sample system for water-cooling, and not just on the CPU. Despite the fact that Titan was (and technically still is) an unreleased card, working alongside their waterblock supplier EKWaterBlocks they were able to get proper waterblocks for Titan in time to build our system. As a result our tri-SLI Genesis unexpectedly ended up being both completely water-cooled and factory overclocked.
The bad news of course is that because of the performance embargo we can’t tell you anything about the performance of the Genesis, other than to say that as fast as one Titan card is, three overclocked Titan cards running on water is even faster, sometimes by a massive margin. Furthermore, coupled with this is the fact that GPU Boost 2 was designed in part to better mesh with the superior cooling capabilities of water-cooling, taking advantage of the fact that water-cooled GPUs rarely hit their temperature limits. As a result what’s already a fast system can sustain performance that much higher thanks to the fact that we hit our top boost bins more often.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here…
| Origin Genesis Specifications | |
| Chassis | Corsair 800D |
| Processor |
Intel Core i7-3970X Extreme Edition, Overclocked To 4.9GHz, ORIGIN CRYOGENIC Custom Liquid Cooling CPU (6x4.9GHz, 32nm, 15MB L3, 150W) |
| Motherboard | Intel DX79SR |
| Memory | 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1866Mhz |
| Graphics | 3-WAY SLI NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN, ORIGIN CRYOGENIC LIQUID Cooling Solution and Professional Overclocking |
| Hard Drive(s) |
2x120 GB Corsair Neutron SSDs in RAID 0 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 6.0Gb/s, 7200RPM, 64MB Cache |
| Optical Drive(s) | 12X Blu-ray (BD) Disc Combo |
| Power Supply | 1.2 Kilowatt PSU Corsair |
| Networking | On-Board Intel |
| Audio |
Realtek ALC892 Speaker, line-in, mic, and surround jacks |
| Front Side |
Power button |
| Top Side | - |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
| Dimensions |
16.2" x 4.6" x 16" (412mm x 117mm x 407mm) |
| Warranty |
1 Year Part Replacement and 45 Day Free Shipping Warranty with Lifetime Labor/24-7 Support |
| Pricing | MSRP of review system: ~$7000 |
We’ll have more on Thursday, including performance data for what so far is turning out to be a ridiculously fast tri-SLI system. So until then, stay tuned.
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TheJian - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/geforce_gtx_t...1176mhz from 876 (boost). No bad for $2500 K20 basically for $1000. I've never done homework on it, but I don't think K20's overclock, but I could be wrong.
Can't wait to see the review tomorrow. Clearly he'll bench it there and he has 3 :) You should get your answers then :)
I'm wondering if some hacker will enable the K20 drivers, or if that's possible. It seems a lot of reviewers got 3, so you should have lots of data by weekend.
Bill Brasky - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
There were rumors this card would launch at 799-899, which made more sense. But for a grand this thing better be pretty darn close to 690.wand3r3r - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
The price tag just makes this card a failure. It's a 580 replacement no matter how they label it, so they can shove it. They lost a potential customer...karasaj - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
So what is the 680?Sandcat - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
A GK104, which replaced the GF104,The GK110 is the replacement for the GF110, which was the GTX 580.
Ananke - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
the 680 was meant as a 560ti replacement...however, NVidia decided it turns too good to be sold too cheap, and changed the model numbering...I have several close friends in the marketing at NV :)However, NV is using this GK110 core for HPComputing for the very beginning in the Quadro cards, since there they really cannot skip on the double precision.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
BS.The 680 core is entirely different, the rollout time is over half a year off, and that just doesn't happen on a whim in Jan2012 with the post mental breakdown purported 7970 epic failure by amd...
So after the scat lickers spew the 7970 amd failure, they claim it's the best card ever, even now.
R O F L
Have it both ways rumor mongering retreads. No one will notice... ( certainly none of you do).
rolodomo - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Their business model has become separating money from the wallets of well-to-do who have no sense of value and technology (NVIDIA's PR admits this in the article ). It is a business model, but boutique. Doesn't do much for the their name brand in the view of the technorati either (NVIDIA: We Market to Suckers).Wreckage - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
It's almost as fast as a pair of 7970's that cost $1100 at launch.AMD set the bar on high prices. Now that they are out of the GPU race, don't expect much to change.
At least NVIDIA was able to bring a major performance increase this year. While AMD has become the new Matrox.
Stuka87 - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
AMD is out of the GPU race? What are you smoking? A $1000 dollar card does not put AMD out of the GPU race. The 7970GE competes well with the 680 for less money (They go back and forth depending on the game).Now if this card was priced at $500 then that would hurt AMD as the prices on the 660/670/680 would all drop. But its not the case, so your point is moot. Not to mention this card was due out a year ago, and it got delayed. Which is why the GK104 was bumped up to the 680 slot.